Apple’s iDataCenter Finally Appears on Google Maps

By Bryan Chaffin

Jun 1st, 2011 9:31 PM EDT

Apple’s massive data center, commonly called the “iDataCenter”, the company is building in Maiden, North Carolina has appeared at long last on Google Maps. The overhead satellite view shows a very large building dominated by a white roof, one road leading in, another road leading out, very little parking, and a separate facility that may or may or may not belong to Apple.

Missing from Google’s mapping service since rumors of the data center first cropped up in 2009, its appearance the day after Apple officially acknowledged its iCloud service has raised questions of a conspiracy between the two otherwise vicious competitors to keep the well-known facility secret. A Google spokesperson put the kibosh on that kind of nonsense, however, saying on Wednesday that the search giant had just pushed out a large update to its mapping service.

“We regularly update our imagery in Google Earth in order to provide our users with the richest, most up-to-date imagery possible,” a Google spokeswoman told a Bay Area NBC affiliate. “In this case, we updated our aerial imagery recently in Lenoir, N.C., which we announced on May 20, 2011.”

So on the one hand, there’s no pointless conspiracy, and on the other hand, coincidences do happen. On the third hand, we now have a fantastic view of what this mysterious and headline-generating facility looks like, at least on the outside.

Apple’s iDataCenter revealed in Google Maps for the first time (Click the image for a larger version)